In this lesson we considered the work of the photographer Thomas Ruff, in particular his jpeg series. Below you can see a good example of two images. The first nice and clear, at high resolution. The second, the same image ‘breaking down’ into pixels at low resolution. This is something Thomas Ruff identified as a form of art.
Thomas thought there was sometimes beauty in the low resolution ‘pixelated’ effect, and that this was something to celebrate. He uses his work to call attention to this and to draw attention to questions about technology, art and digital imaging.
During the lesson we experimented with pixelation and the filters on Photoshop and these are a few examples of the effects possible.
’emboss’
‘extrude’
‘zig zag’
‘solarize’
Independent Research from the Moma website (23/12/19) Thomas Ruff produced his Jpegs series without using a camera. Instead, he printed compressed electronic image files (jpegs), many of them downloaded from the Internet, at monumental scale. The series, which encompasses tranquil landscapes, scenes of war, and natural and man-made catastrophes, began with images of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
To make a pixelated image of an erupting volcano, Ruff printed a low-resolution jpeg at a very large scale. At such size, the pixels-the building blocks of all digital images-are magnified to the point of breaking up the very image they compose.
By foregrounding the repurposed photograph’s underlying structure and naming (msh for Mount St.Helens), Ruff calls attention to the ways digital images are constructed, circulated, and viewed today.
Reflections It was fun playing with the filters and I think they could be useful in my practice to give me new ideas for future development. For example, if I created an image (traditionally) which I thought was a bit boring I could use the Photoshop filters for inspiration.
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